More Iraq Military Deaths

But they won't count these as a casualties of war:

On Wednesday, nine days after Sherwood returned from a tour in Iraq, he apparently shot and killed his wife before turning the gun on himself in their Fort Collins home, Army spokeswoman Dee McNutt said. Sherwood's wife's name was not released.

Investigators had not determined a motive and results of a planned autopsy had not been released. The couple's 8-month-old child was in the care of a neighbor when the couple were killed, said Eloise Campanella, a spokeswoman for the Larimer County sheriff.

Sherwood, 36, had returned from Iraq on July 25 after spending nearly a year there and was on leave at the time of the shootings, McNutt said.

Or these:

The independent National Gulf War Service Center estimates that nearly 90 armed forces personnel have committed suicide while serving in Iraq or Afghanistan or after returning home. The estimates are based on official military reports and news accounts, center director Steve Robinson said.

Officials at Fort Hood, Texas, said two soldiers who served in Iraq war killed themselves in separate incidents since Saturday.

Read More......

Friday Night Open Thread

The weekend, finally Read More......

It's beginning to look a lot like Souter...

To all those far-right religious fundies trying to spin this as "oh, just because John Roberts helped the pro-gay side of a gay rights case doesn't mean he agreed with the gays," to that I reply: Novak! I mean, bullshit!

Let me put it this way. You radical right nuts want Roberts to be just like you. Well, then let me ask you this. If someone asked YOU to volunteer your time, for free, to help out the pro-gay side of a gay rights case, would YOU? I went to law school, and I sure as hell wouldn't help anyone working on YOUR legal cases, pro bono or even for pay. And let's face it, you wouldn't help the gays either. But John Roberts did.

It's beginning to look a lot like Souter... La, la, la, la la. Read More......

FBI searches home of newly-outed Spokane Mayor West, take his computer

Schadenfreude alert!

The FBI has searched the home of Spokane Mayor Jim West, seizing his computers and related files, court documents filed today reveal.

The FBI obtained the federal warrant to search West’s home in west Spokane after convincing a federal judge that there is probable cause to believe a federal crime has been committed.

The warrant says there is sufficient evidence to believe that West “knowingly and willingly engaged in a scheme to entice others to engage in sexual activity with him through offers and grants of city of Spokane jobs, internships or appointments.”

The search warrant affidavit, signed by FBI special agent Frank Harrill, said the federal investigation suggested West’s solicitation of sex-for-city jobs was performed on a personal computer located at his home at 639 W. Persimmon Lane.

GOP. The party that just keeps on giving and giving and giving. Read More......

"Good Night. And, Good Luck." The Americablog Preview

THIS IS NOT A FILM REVIEW NOR DOES IT CONTAIN SPOILERS (UNLESS YOU'RE IGNORANT OF RECENT AMERICAN HISTORY).

George Clooney's second feature film as a director has been tapped to open the 43rd New York Film Festival on Sept. 23 and no wonder. The Oscar buzz is already building for this smart, entertaining look at the showdown between the fear-mongering Sen. Joe McCarthy (seen only in vintage news clips) and crusading journalist Edward R. Murrow (a great, controlled David Strathairn). Shot in black and white, it's about much more than McCarthyism -- it's about decency and what it means to be an American, the politics of fear, the increasing commmercialization and dumbing down of TV (back in the golden age of live drama, mind you) and more.

"Good Night. And, Good Luck" -- named after Murrow's signature sign-off phrase -- confirms Clooney as a serious talent and is bursting with great actors giving tight no-nonsense performances. Everyone from Robert Downey Jr. and Frank Langella to Patricia Clarkson and Clooney himself is top-notch. And for everyone tired of bloated moviemaking, it's about a trim 90 minutes long, with several subplots we haven't even mentioned. It's going to send more young people into journalism than any movie since "All The President's Men."

But why is Americablog talking about it? Because this movie is incredibly relevant. The far right can't turn this into some leftie diatribe -- this is recent American history, based on the facts and often using historical footage from the HUAC hearings and the actual words of Murrow and McCarthy. It's the far right's own unease over Bush's deeply un-American policies (torture, smearing people who disagree with you, attacking anyone who doesn't support you as weak on terror/communism) that let's them understand why this film speaks to us today.

You'll thrill to what journalism was capable of and can be again when Murrow delivers some stirring commentary. Hear him argue with network executives about taking on McCarthy -- when Murrow says passionately that there AREN'T always two balanced sides to every story -- and you'll want to applaud. Listen to Murrow finish a broadcast by saying we can't fight for freedom abroad by abandoning it at home and you'll reach for a pen to write those words down. Watch a clip of Eisenhower trumpet the greatness of America -- how no one has to fear being thrown into jail by the government, how we have habeas corpus and are proud of it --and you'll realize how far we've fallen from that American Dream.

This is going to be one of the major films of the year and it deserves to wake people up to the debates we should be having today. Clooney isn't a Hollywood liberal trying to attack Bush. He doesn't need to. All Clooney needs to do is illustrate our recent past and help us remember the lessons we should have learned. Still, can't wait for that Bill O'Reilly sit-down.

Anticipate it eagerly. Read More......

Friday Cat Blogging

Because for the next three weeks, I got cats.

This is Sushi (the one I sat on)



This is Nasdaq



And this is Sushi again. They both slept like this the entire day, finally got up at like 9pm.

Read More......

Sci-Fi Friday... in French?

Well, they're reruns and in French, but at least it's on :-) Read More......

Mehlman really wants Roberts Confirmed

AP:

The head of the Republican Party on Friday faulted some Democrats and liberals who want to turn "a judicial confirmation into a political campaign" and called for swift Senate confirmation of Supreme Court nominee John Roberts.

Ken Mehlman, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, used an address at the organization's annual summer meeting to praise President Bush's domestic record and his selection of Roberts, criticize judicial activism and focus on the party's outreach to black and Hispanic voters.

Now, Ken, are you getting all excited about John Roberts because of that NY Times article this morning? And, Ken, you know which article I am talking about: Court Nominee Advised Group on Gay Rights. Read More......

Open Thread

Speak. Read More......

Far Right Using Pulpit For Politics

A scary story in USA Today about how the far right continues to organize among evangelical Christians and uses the pulpit for politics -- especially to organize attacks on the freedoms of Americans they don't like. You wouldn't think these fringe radicals could get more organized, but apparently they have only begun to network. And the religious voice on the left? Muted and scattered. Some disturbing details:

Pastor Russell Johnson paces across the broad stage as he decries the "secular jihadists" who have "hijacked" America, accuses the public schools of neglecting to teach that Hitler was "an avid evolutionist" and links abortion to children who murder their parents....

The Ohio effort isn't unique. Johnson's project -- which he says has signed up more than 900 pastors in Ohio during its first 10 weeks in operation --? has helped spawn the Texas Restoration Project in Bush's home state. The fledging Pennsylvania Pastors' Network has signed up 81 conservative clergy so far. Similar efforts are beginning to percolate elsewhere....

John Green, a political scientist at the University of Akron, calls the networks a new chapter in an effort to organize conservative clergy that began with the Moral Majority a quarter-century ago, then faltered....

"We as Christians need to take a stand as to what our beliefs are," Linda Stoffer, 50, a bank loan officer, says after the service in Canton. Her top concerns are gay marriage and abortion. "And life issues," adds her husband, Dave, 54, who works in a cabinet shop. "Like, what was her name? Terri Schiavo."

"We sit back and let it happen," Jean Wuske, 77, says. "We need to be more vocal --? let God back into places he should be, like in the schools...."

Tax-exempt churches and organizations can't endorse candidates or be formally tied to a political party. Johnson notes that the Ohio Restoration Project aims to do more than register voters. Each pastor who joins also promises to sign up 100 "Intercessors" to join an e-mail prayer chain and 200 "Minutemen Volunteers" to work in community projects.

"I like to say I'm not a Republican or a Democrat, I'm a Christ-o-crat," declares Pastor Rod Parsley, a supporter of the Ohio Restoration Project and head of a similar venture called Ohio Reformation.

Read More......

UK Arresting People, Taking Them To Court

Per USA Today:

Yeshshiembet Girma, 29, and Muluemebet Girma, 21, of separate addresses in south London, were charged with failing to disclose information that could have helped police secure the arrest, prosecution or conviction of a person involved in terrorism, a Metropolitan Police spokeswoman said....

The first person charged --? Ismael Abdurahman, 23, from southeast London --? appeared in court Thursday to face charges of withholding information that helped suspected subway bomber Hamdi Issac avoid capture....

In the first court hearing in Britain in the attacks, Ismael Abdurahman, 23, from southeast London, spoke only to confirm his name and age. He was not asked to enter a plea during a 10-minute hearing in Bow Street Magistrates' Court before being led off to jail. He is scheduled to appear in court again next Thursday....

Britain is holding 14 suspects in the investigation, and Italy has three. Police believe they have all the July 21 bombers in custody....

Britain has requested that Issac, also known as Osman Hussain, be extradited from Italy. His lawyer, Antonietta Sonnessa, said an extradition hearing was set for Aug. 17.

Arresting people, using the law to combat the lawless, bringing suspects before a judge and building a case against them, demonstrating that even people who terrorize the UK will receive due process and an attorney to represent them.

Bush must be thinking, "How quaint." Read More......

Open Warfare Evolving In Catholic Church

Thank God! The first response to the idiotic and chilling NYT op-ed column attacking evolution by Cardinal Schonborn has finally arrived. No surprise: it comes from a Jesuit. The Independent in the UK has the story about a column blasting the Cardinal's fear of science and knowledge that appears in the British Catholic newspaper The Tablet.

In an article with explosive implications for the Church, Father George Coyne, an American Jesuit priest who is a distinguished astronomy professor, attacks head-on the views of Cardinal Christoph Shonborn, the Archbishop of Vienna and a long-standing associate of Joseph Ratzinger, the German cardinal who was elected as Pope Benedict XVI in April....

In The Tablet he says that Cardinal Shonborn's article has "darkened the waters" of the rapport between Church and science, and says - flatly contradicting the cardinal - that even a world in which "life... has evolved through a process of random genetic mutations and natural selection" is compatible with "God's dominion".

For a Vatican official of such seniority openly to attack the views of a cardinal on such a potentially explosive subject as evolution is unprecedented. It also reveals a deep rift at the heart of the Catholic Church's thinking. It is known that Fr Coyne wrote privately to both Cardinal Shonborn and the Pope himself protesting against The New York Times article soon after it was published last month. But it is understood that so many scientists, especially Catholic scientists, have since contacted him to express their disquiet, that he felt he had to go public....

The key question behind the debate is the opinion of new Pope. Some fear that the cardinal would never have published such a controversial article in such a prominent medium without his personal approval. But nothing will be known for certain until the Pope speaks for himself.

I know some of you think that "religion is crazy, so why do you still pay attention." But the simple fact is that billions of people follow an organized religion. They are a fact of life and a force in the world -- people of faith need to push to make certain they're a force for good. This battle will help determine that for the Catholic Church and it's one war I heartily endorse. The hearts -- and especially minds -- of Catholics are at stake. After this, we'll move on to the malarkey about interfering in elections and telling public officials who must faithfully represent non-Catholics how to vote. Read More......

Why is Bob Novak poisoning America?

In an old Crossfire segment, Novak created a video with clips of Begala and Carville using "foul language," then criticized them for "poisoning America." ThinkProgress has the transcript - oh to find that video. Read More......

Bob Novak t-shirts now available!

While you were all sleeping, this is what I was doing instead of going to the Louvre.

We have three varieties of t-shirts and mousepads in the AMERICAblog store:





Read More......

Bush, Intelligent Design, and Rafael Palmeiro: To hell with the kids

My latest article from RADAR:

When asked this week about the Valerie Plame scandal engulfing top adviser Karl Rove and an ever growing number of White House staffers, President Bush told Knight Ridder to “wait and see what the true facts are.” It was an odd answer, given that we already have the facts. Rove’s own lawyer has publicly admitted his client was the leaker (or, at least, one of the leakers), and Bush promised last year that he’d fire any staffer responsible for the leak. So what additional facts is the president waiting for?

The solution to the conundrum is simple. For President Bush there are two kinds of facts: regular facts and, as he put it, “true” facts. Regular facts are the inconvenient stuff of naysayers, such as expert advisers, scientists, courts of law, or one’s own eyes. True facts, on the other hand, are a pure reflection of desire, a kind of wishing makes it so—like when Peter Pan exhorts us to clap our hands and let our belief in fairies save the dying Tinkerbell. (Except in Bushworld it’s Rove wearing the fairy wings.) Chalk it up to a poor grasp of reality, incredible hubris, or even outright deception, but “true facts” always trump the truth when Bush is in charge....

Read More......

Murray Waas explains how the DC Press has protected Novak

Maybe it will change now, we'll see...

Anyway, Murray Waas has been breaking a lot of the news on the Rove Scandal. I have become a devout follower. This is from an interview on Democracy Now which took place yesterday before Novak's hissy fit. This explains a lot. Not only did Novak practice bad journalism, no one in the DC press corps will go after him for it. He's part of "the elite."

Waas was asked about the press, I think the question is instructive because it seems to be a given that many members of the media have known the facts of the Plame affair including Rove's involvement:

JUAN GONZALEZ: And Murray Waas, the role of the press in this whole issue, because clearly, because of the attempts of the White House to leak the information on Valerie Plame to a whole number of folks in the press, this is a story that many reporters in Washington know more about than they're actually reporting.

Waas really dissected Novak's work, explaining how poor the journalism was, and then said this:

MURRAY WAAS:....So if we believe Bob Novak's account, he engaged in substandard news reporting on not one aspect of this column, but several aspects of this column. And it's led to the jailing of a New York Times reporter, it's harmed the national security of the United States because it led to the outing of a C.I.A. operative. It's hurt the morale of the C.I.A. It's damaged the Bush administration endlessly, and it's hurt the credibility of the press, partly because reporters were engaged in this scheme or took the bad information, and also because they're now revealing their confidential sources in cooperating with the prosecutors.

So, all of this occurred because reporters were sloppy, because they didn't do their work. I mean, that, in effect is the cover story, or that's what Robert Novak is insisting. And I have interviewed Geneva Overholser, for example, the former editor at The Des Moines Register, and she said some strong words about Novak, but what's interesting is because he's really at the core of a elite group, a cocktail party crowd or kind of celebrity journalism at CNN, nobody will come out and -- the Washington press corps is pretty much silent. The big wheels and big guns are not saying anything. They're not policing themselves. And this could have really deleterious and damaging long-term effects on journalism.

Read More......

Morning open thread

I am still howling over Novak.



Novak Interruptus Read More......

George Bush's Culture Of Death Continues

The world poured out its heart during the brief moment the tsunami captured our attention. But the slow-motion disaster of hunger -- which can be predicted months in advance -- leaves us cold. Money spent early on could save a lot more lives a lot more cheaply. But Bush ignored the nightmare in Niger.

International aid officials and charity workers here say that the world's dilatory reaction to Niger's woes is hard to excuse. Some of them also say that Niger's miseries this year are merely a worsened version of its perennial ones - and that until Niger addresses its problems of primitive farming, primitive health care and primitive social conditions, infants will continue to die unnoticed in numbers that dwarf any hunger emergency....

...they are pushing the death rate for small children even higher than Niger's customary one-in-four level, and killing off the livestock upon which the nation's nomads depend.

How many people need aid depends on the yardstick used. About 1.2 million of Niger's 3.6 million rural farmers and herders are described as "extremely vulnerable" to food shortages and in need of food aid, according to an assessment of Niger's crisis conducted four months ago by the United Nations, major charities and Niger's government. Of those, about 874,000 urgently need free food, the latest assessment concluded late last month, and that number could rise until the harvest is completed in October....

Among others, the United Nations World Food Program and Doctors Without Borders sounded alarms, and Niger's government, with World Food Program approval, quickly asked donors to give Niger 71,000 tons of food aid and $3 million for the 400,000 most vulnerable farmers and herders.

By May, it had received fewer than 7,000 tons of food and one $323,000 donation, from Luxembourg....

The charity has angrily accused governments of allowing children to die, albeit not intentionally, so that the free market in grain would not be disrupted.

Three million dollars could have made a crucial early difference. Three million dollars and some of the food we let rot in silos to prop up prices and undercut other African farmers. That isn't even big enough to qualify as an accounting error for the US. So big business trumps starving babies. And Bush does nothing. Some "culture of life." Read More......

Four More Soldiers Killed, Bush's Iraq Approval at 38%

Death toll numbers increasing. Bush approval tanking. Think there's a relationship?

From AP:

President Bush, facing a grim and growing death toll in Iraq, said Thursday that threats of more violence by al-Qaida's second-in-command would not intimidate the United States into retreat.

At the same time, the U.S. military said in Iraq that four more service members had been killed in action but also insisted American troops were making progress against insurgents.

An AP-Ipsos poll taken early this week showed public support of Bush's handling of the war had dropped to 38 percent, the lowest so far.

Interesting to see where Bush is losing support. Looks like it's from a lot of the people who got him re-elected last year:

The AP-Ipsos poll found that only 38 percent of Americans approve of Bush's handling of Iraq, the low point so far. A year ago, the public was evenly divided on Iraq, and confidence in Bush's stance on the war and terrorism helped him to election victory.

Bush has lost support most dramatically among younger women, especially those who live in the suburbs, and among men with a high school education or less, the poll indicated.

Read More......